


White Light, Infrared Heat

by Omorka



Category: Eureka
Genre: Gen, Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-05
Updated: 2010-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-05 21:05:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omorka/pseuds/Omorka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The lure of discovery sends Taggart and Fargo into the less safe parts of the woods around Eureka.</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Light, Infrared Heat

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place sometime during Season 1, after the webisodes ("Hide and Seek") but before "H.O.U.S.E. Rules". Written for the prompt "wil-o-the-wisp/ghost lights."

im Taggart had, he thought, a broader mind than most of those in Eureka. Sure, the physical scientists had a taste for time travel and alternate dimensions, the sorts of things that fueled sci-fi movies since the '40s, but he had traced animals both scientifically verified and potentially mythic. He'd trawled for Nessie in her loch, he'd crawled through verdant jungle hunting the mokele-mbembe, he'd tracked polar bears across Arctic ice and looked for sea serpents, and he'd even climbed the Himalayas seeking the yeti. Of the usual cryptozoologist's grails, he was pretty sure that the sasquatch and the kraken existed, and hadn't convinced himself that the others didn't. He liked to keep an open mind about such things, especially in Eureka, where the ones that didn't exist might be designed at any minute.

At the same time, he was a rational man. He drew the line at creatures with a supernatural element - he wasn't fooled by reports of sirens, mermaids, therianthropes of any sort, nagas, or quetzalcoatls. Animals that were so rare no modern man had laid eyes on them were eminently respectable as subjects of scientific study. He left magic to those who couldn't distinguish between science, science fiction, and fantasy.

He most certainly did _not_ believe in ghosts.

It was with this in mind that he climbed out of his vehicle by the side of the road a few miles outside of town, watching what looked for all the world like a pilgrimage of candles drifting slowly away from the road. Looking through his binoculars didn't help, as the lights were vague and flickering, and he saw no trace of anything - or anyone - holding them up. The sun's light was low, at an angle, and ready to slip past the rolling hills to the west, but still quite strong enough to see, and there just wasn't anything visible to support the flickering flames.

"Bioluminescence, it's got to be," he muttered, grabbing a dart gun and a net from the rack behind the driver's seat. "But there aren't any known species that would cause that effect at this time of year, not in the Pacific Northwest. Either we're talking major discovery here, or someone's pet experiment has gotten out of their lab." Either way, that was his responsibility.

Following the lights was reasonably easy; he could keep them in sight without any trouble. He was well at home in these woods. But he didn't ever seem to gain on them, either; they kept flickering, just at the edge of visibility, moving farther from the road.

The roots of the trees flashed by under his boots, and ferns and brambles clutched at his trouser legs. The woods were strangely silent. The sound of his footsteps were broken only by the occasional scuttle of a squirrel in the branches above him, or once in a long time by a single bird call. He saw no deer, no sign of any larger mammals - nothing moving on the forest floor at all. He wondered whether the bioluminescent creatures were frightening the other wildlife. There was a strange tang in the air, not smoke or musk - it almost smelled like lightning, although there was no sign of a storm.

Lost in the endless time of the hunt, it was with a start that Taggart realized that the bioluminescence (that looked like, but could not in fact be, a trail of candle flames without the candles) was the only light he could see. The sky had clouded over, the sun had set, and the moon wouldn't be rising tonight until well after midnight. He reached for the flashlight in his vest and turned it on, to keep his footing.

The lights disappeared.

He cursed himself quietly, for ruining his night vision and giving himself away, and closed his eyes as he turned the flashlight off. He opened them a few minutes later, hoping they'd re-adjusted to the darkness, but the bioluminescence had fled - using the binoculars in every direction failed to find a trace of what he was tracking. He'd neither seen nor smelled tracks on the ground, which meant whatever he was stalking could fly - it had probably reached its destination and then hidden, to avoid attracting predators like himself.

An owl hooted off to his left. Taggart listened to the slowly rising night-time sounds of the forest, and realized with a slight sense of dread that he couldn't hear the road.

Well, that wasn't going to be so bad, was it? He'd been following the lights in what felt like a straight line, so all he had to do was turn around and head back directly. He did so, turning the flashlight back on to avoid tripping over roots in the dark.

A few clearings later, a faint flicker appeared in front of him and slightly to the left. He snapped the flashlight off again immediately, to avoid scaring his self-lighting prey. Slowly, he crept forwards, his feet carefully finding purchase on the leafy forest floor. He did seem to be making progress towards this one. It was just one candle-flicker, this time, not the procession, and a much lighter color. He switched the flashlight for the net, and picked up his pace slightly, moving into position to -

There was a growl from below him and to his right, and something grabbed onto his boot. He spun - a bear cub? There were occasional bears in these woods, but they never bothered anyone. He fumbled for the flashlight as he tried to reclaim his foot, dropping the net on the ground and bumping something with it - something that made a very familiar whimpering sound.

He snapped the flashlight on. A pair of glowing green eyes looked back at him; as his eyes adjusted, he recognized the canine face they belonged to.

"Lojack!" The cur that dogged his steps was tugging at his pants leg, whining. "What are you doing out here? I'm busy! I'll chase you later!"

But the single light was gone, or at least he couldn't see it. Lojack continued tugging, until Taggart finally wheeled on him. "All right, since you're determined to cheat me out of my discovery, I'll take my pleasure in bringing you in for good this time!" He fumbled in the dark for the net, and Lojack took off, diving through the underbrush.

He chased Lojack through thickets and hollows, around a thick grove of trees with trunks like towers - back to the road, and his truck. An oncoming car was approaching them, slowing as it came. The caitiff shot under Taggart's vehicle and across the two lanes of blacktop, just as Henry's tow truck pulled up beside it.

The driver's side window rolled down. "You all right here, Jim?" Henry's face was, as always, friendly, but Taggart had other things on his mind than small talk. He ducked around the tow truck and into the woods on the other side.

That awful mutt was gone, too. There was a crisscross of canine tracks over here; someone had been walking their dog - no, dogs, plural. There was no way he was going to be able to distinguish Lojack's pawprints in the dark.

Taggart pushed himself back to the road. "That devil-dog's been wandering out here again. Thought I had him, this time."

Henry nodded. "Better luck next time. While you've been out, have you seen any other stranded motorists?"

"No. Why?"

Henry sighed. "We got a call from someone driving down this stretch of road that they saw someone's headlights blinking, off the roadway, like they slid down into the ditch, but when I got there, there wasn't anything. When I saw your rural assault vehicle here, I thought maybe they'd mistaken it for a car, but your lights weren't on at all."

"No, I thought they might . . . give me away." Taggart rubbed at his chin, thoughtfully.

"You still really ought to have your emergency blinkers on." The town mechanic looked down the road again. "I'm going to drive these last couple of miles one more time and see if I just missed something."

"Maybe they pushed themselves back onto the road," offered the town's animal control specialist. "I'll keep my eyes peeled."

"Thanks." Dr. Deacon drove off again, and Taggart climbed back into his own truck. He scanned the woods around him for any sign of the bioluminescence or Lojack, but neither were to be found.

\---

Obviously, this was going to require assistance. And there were only so many people in Eureka that one could recruit into a search party for mysterious bioluminescent flying creatures. After ticking off his list of people labeled "too busy" and finding that the only person left was Vince, who was not the world's best tracker unless you were looking for truffles, he revised his criteria to "able to be intimidated and not so busy they couldn't be hijacked after work hours." That left him Vince, Fargo, Drury the lab tech, and Larry.

He went after Drury first, and found that she had a date that next evening. He made her promise that, if he hadn't caught a sample of the new organism by the following day, she'd make it a priority, and verified that it wasn't someone's escaped experiment. At least, not someone's _documented_ escaped experiment.

Of the three remaining people on his list, none of them were particularly good trackers, and all of them were likely to panic if they encountered something even mildly dangerous, like a venomous snake. They all also had an additional issue, if a minor one. Despite the fact that they would, to a man, protest strongly otherwise, Taggart was pretty sure that deep down, they all believed in ghosts. He was going to have to convince them that it was a perfectly natural phenomenon, or they were going to not just panic but have a major freak-out as soon as they saw it. So, he picked the one who was most likely to cling to the scientific explanation even if his instincts were screaming otherwise. That he was probably the second most easily intimidated of the three didn't hurt, either.

"Dr. Taggart, the last time you and I went out in the woods looking for an unexplained phenomenon, I got my glasses broken and you thought you'd killed me," Fargo complained.

"But you got better," Taggart pointed out. "We solved the mystery, and your DNA retrotherapy and the good technicians here at Global fixed me right up."

"You got _shot_."

"Sheriff Carter only winged me, Fargo my boy. Barely a scratch; just enough to warn me off in my more primitive state of mind. I'm _fine_, and so are you, and there's a mystery out there." Taggart waved at the horizon with a faraway look in his eyes. Fargo looked at him, realized that his evening was already shot, and trudged off towards the Section Two wardrobe department to find a camouflage vest and some hiking boots.

\---

The mobile hunting lodge, as Fargo thought of it, came to a stop far enough off the road that a passing motorist was unlikely to see it. The two of them piled out of the front seats, binoculars in hand. Fargo's were a prototype of a version ultimately intended for the military; it had infrared, ultraviolet, and otherwise digitally enhanced capabilities that he devoutly hoped would help keep him from stumbling blindly into trees in the night. His other hand was wrapped around the long handle of one of Taggart's nets.

Taggart had his tranquilizer gun slung across his back; he had an assortment of nets with and without handles clutched in his hands, and his own night-vision binoculars slung around his neck. His grin was maniacal in the extreme; he made a variety of gloating noises as he finished applying camouflage paint to his face with one hand, his other hand still full of netting. He turned to Fargo and applied the last of the paint on his fingers to Fargo's face in two or three expert sweeps, before the smaller man could react to what was happening.

"There. Now you'll stick out less. But keep your head down; the glare off your lenses will give you away if you're not careful." Taggart rearranged the gear he'd draped around his arms and shoulders, and then slid into the underbrush without another word. Fargo ducked his head as instructed, and pushed into the spaces that the more experienced tracker had just vacated.

They were far enough into the woods that Fargo was pretty sure he'd get lost if he tried to slink back to the car on his own when Taggart murmured, through barely opened lips, "Anything on those goggles of yours, Fargo?"

"Let me check." Fargo brought the binoculars up and peeked out of the stand of brush they crouched behind. He swept the area around them. "Nope. Nothing. Wait - " He peered, then dropped the binoculars, then raised them again. "Over there, about eleven o'clock. I'm not getting anything on the visible frequencies, but there's a strong infrared signature."

Taggart raised his own binoculars, squinted, and grinned. "That's it, all right. Follow me."

"But, Taggart," protested Fargo in as quiet a voice as he could muster and still be heard over the sound of his own clumsy footfalls, "Bioluminescence shouldn't have a detectable infrared signature. It doesn't put off that kind of heat."

"An all-new type, then." Taggart's face was alive with the joy of discovery. "Just think, Fargo - you and me, sharing credit for an entirely new contribution to cryptozoology." He continued gliding through the low-lying vines and shrubs like he'd been born here; Fargo stumbled along behind, avoiding the larger roots and creepers and trying not to be sent flying by the smaller ones.

Again, they tracked the floating string of lights for what seemed to Fargo like hours. He could see them, now, like a pilgrim's train of candles in the velvet night, but they never seemed to get any closer. Nor did Taggart seem to tire of their pursuit; he'd hardly broken a sweat, even though the terrain they were crossing was getting rougher and rougher. His boots were rubbing blisters on the backs of both heels, and he thought he felt the right one burst.

Finally, he pleaded for a break. Taggart flashed him a disgusted look, then seemed to think better of it, nodded curtly, and said "Water break. Two minutes." Fargo gratefully sank to a cross-legged seat on the forest floor. Taggart leaned on a rock, dug a small canteen from the gear on his back, and took several large swallows. Fargo thought about trying to dig his own water bottle out, and decided against it; he'd most likely lose it in the dark. No sense in adding littering to the litany of his faults.

His eyes focused on something almost at right angles to the path they were pursuing. "What's that?"

Taggart followed his pointing finger without difficulty, even in the low light. He grinned. "It's another one. Just like last night, there's a flock all together, and then a lone one. Maybe their social structure is polygynous - the large group could be the dominant male and all the females and children, and the lone one is a subordinate male. Typical herd structure, really."

"Uh, Taggart?" Fargo had the binoculars up against his glasses, and his expression was somewhere between troubled and merely pained.

"Yes?" Taggart began gathering up the bundle of netting he'd set down. "Your two minutes are up, by the way."

"That's not the same thing as the other ones." Did Fargo look a little pale?

Taggart frowned. "How do you know that?"

Fargo gestured in the direction they'd been going. "All of those look the same on these - low emissions in the visual spectrum, higher emissions in infrared. Whatever they are, it's a, a flock, or whatever, of the same thing. But that - " He pointed in the other direction.

His hand trembled. Taggart scowled. "Out with it, Fargo!"

"That doesn't show up on the binoculars _at all_. Not in infrared. Not in ultraviolet. Not in night vision. And not on normal vision, either." Fargo's voice held the first beginnings of panic. "That's not there. Either we're both hallucinating it, or it's something that can't be captured by an artificial device."

"Easy on, Fargo." Taggart tried to sound soothing and failed. "You sure those binocs are working correctly?"

"Yes, Taggart, I am. They pick you, me, and those other things up just fine." Fargo shivered, despite the night being fairly warm. "I don't know what that is, but I know it's a bad omen. We've got to get back to the car."

"Pssh! Omens, Fargo? You're a scientist. You know better than that." Taggart turned towards the flock of lights. He squinted again; were they closer now than they had been? "Maybe it's a reflection of one of them off of some bit of shiny metal left out here." He pushed two branches apart and was off again.

Fargo scrambled to his feet. "Taggart, don't leave me out here like that!" With difficulty, he squeezed between the branches the stronger man had parted easily, and darted out into an open area. He saw Taggart's shapeless hat disappear into another thicket, and scuttled after. The second light flickered off to the right again, much closer, pale and white instead of the yellowish flames they were following, and Fargo yelped. He took three hesitant steps towards it, then turned away, dashing towards where Taggart had just been -

And then there was nothing under his feet. The lights disappeared somewhere up above him, and a rush of dirt and leaves scoured his face, and then there was impact, pain, and darkness.

"Hush, Fargo," snarled Taggart under his breath, but a second yelp sounded, strangely hollow, and the strand of lights he was chasing went out, as if someone had blown out a birthday cake. Taggart swore, and turned around.

"Fargo?" he called. No answer came. He re-traced his steps, and found the long-handled net he'd handed the computer scientist snagged on a blackberry cane, dangling a few feet above the ground. There was no other sign of the younger man. His tracks on the forest floor were confused, merging into disturbed leaves.

"FARGO!" Taggart gave up on the pursuit, turned on his electric torch, and shouted the smaller scientist's name. Silence answered him - no owls, no mice startled by his voice. He flicked the flashlight beam across the leaf-meal, looking for some hint, some sign of struggle. Nothing.

A single flicker of pale white light danced at the edge of the beam for an instant. When Taggart turned his eyes towards it, it was gone.

\---

Deputy Jo Lupo pulled up to the sheriff's office bright and early at 6 am, as she usually did on Saturdays. For a Friday, yesterday had been fairly quiet, and Thursday had been all right except for Dr. Deacon's false alarm. She had great hopes that today would be fairly restful as well.

Those hopes were immediately dashed by the haggard figure of Jim Taggart in front of the door. He was covered in bits of leaves, which was not unusual for him, and he looked sleep-deprived and guilt-stricken, which was.

"All right, Tag, what's the story?" She had her keys out and ducked around him to get the door open. No point in standing around outside; the morning was cool but sticky.

"I lost Fargo," moaned the zoologist, his hands fidgeting with one of his nets.

"So why the long face?" Her grin froze and fell as the intended joke made him flinch. "Why don't you tell me what happened."

"Not much to tell. I'd seen some undocumented bioluminescent creatures in the woods north of town - "

"Whoa, what kind of creatures?"

"Bioluminescent. They emit light on their own, instead of -"

"Tag, I know what 'bioluminescent' means, okay? Are we talking about fireflies, birds, snakes, bats, deer, bears . . ?" She turned her hands palms up, looking the question at him.

"I don't know, exactly. Flying beasties of some sort. From their flight patterns, I'd guess large insects - cicada-sized - but I haven't gotten close enough to see one in any detail." He described the circumstances of his first sighting two nights before, and then his second outing with Fargo the previous night.

"And what time did this happen?" Jo's fingers flew across her keyboard, filling out the incident report. One of these days, she was going to print up a file of all the cases that mentioned Fargo and leave it on Carter's desk to fume over.

"Between eleven and midnight last night. It was 12:14 am when I finally made it back to my truck, and I'd been searching for at least three-quarters of an hour at that point, but I didn't check my watch." Taggart scrubbed at his face with one broad palm and blinked at her desk lamp.

"And then what did you do?"

"I got a bigger flashlight and went back out. I scoured a dozen square miles of those woods, looking for any sign of him. I couldn't pick up any tracks." His eyes flickered, then went towards his boots. He had mentioned Fargo's sighting the second light and starting to scare. He hadn't mentioned its occasional reappearance during his search, and he wasn't sure if she'd believe him. It had disappeared again every time he'd looked directly at it.

"Did you check his place? Maybe he just - had a Fargo freak-out moment and went home." Jo sounded hopeful.

"He was already exhausted by how far we'd trekked. I can't imagine that even his yellow streak could carry him home faster than I could track him, and he'd've left footprints." Taggart's voice was high and reedy. He shook his head and answered her question. "No, I haven't gone by his house. I did try calling his phone, but I'd made him leave it in my truck so it wouldn't go off and scare off our quarry, and for once he did as I told him." He grimaced. "When I gave up looking for him, I came straight here. I got here about an hour ago."

Jo nodded. "I'll go by his place and check there, and then see if he signed in for the day at GD. You go home and get some sleep. If both of those turn up negative, I'll call Carter and we'll start a search. We'll contact you so you can show us where he disappeared."

Taggart nodded, his eyes heavy with guilt and fatigue. Jo put a hand on his arm and steered him to the door. A light mist started falling as she saw him to his truck; she glanced at the low grey sky in annoyance.

\---

Fargo woke to a blur of black and grey, and a mouthful of sand and leaves. He was semi-prone, with one knee under him and his other foot lower than his head, and wedged into a tight space, something cold and damp but very, very solid pressing in on either side of him. Spitting, he tried to push himself up, and immediately a wave of dizziness and nausea set his head and stomach to spinning in opposite directions. Sharp pain shot through the leg folded under him. He cried out - or tried to; the sound that came out was gravelly and scratchy, and burned his throat like lye and bad liquor. He settled for whimpering like a whipped puppy, followed by more vigorous spitting to get whatever this stuff was out of his mouth.

He couldn't see well enough to be sure, but it looked suspiciously like a combination of sand and poison ivy leaves.

"Oh, great," he whispered to himself. Yes, his tongue was definitely swollen. This was so not good. He was allergic to poison ivy, more than the average individual. He hoped he hadn't inhaled any of the bits of leaf while he was unconscious.

Slowly, methodically, he attempted to move each part of his body in turn. Left arm bruised and one finger possibly twisted, but basically okay, and free to move. Chest bruised, possibly a cracked rib on the right side. Binoculars poking him in the chest; he was going to have to get those off if he could. Left leg at an odd angle and quite throughly wedged into what felt like sandy soil, but he could wiggle his toes and nothing felt broken or sprained. Right leg folded under him, definitely bruised, ankle either broken or so badly sprained it _felt_ broken. Right arm intact, but pinned between his chest and the side of the crevice he was wedged in and itching like mad - probably got poison ivied, too. Neck okay, although trying to lift his head summoned the vertigo and nausea again. That suggested a possible concussion; his vision was blurred, which might also support that conclusion, except that he couldn't feel his glasses and his vision was guaranteed to be blurry without them.

Not that he could see much, anyway. He pulled his left arm up and over his head, feeling around in the space in front of him. More dead leaves, loose sand, a stick - he pulled that closer to him; it might be useful later. Something else hard. His fingers closed over a familiar object, and he almost crowed in triumph before his throat warned him how bad an idea that would be. He drew back his glasses and perched them on his nose. The right earpiece was gone, and the lens on that side cracked and scratched, but at least he could see a little bit better. Some more fumbling found the flashlight he'd tucked into his front vest pocket. He tried the switch; it was broken. He set it back down. Nothing else seemed to have made the journey down with him, which meant he didn't have the net, or, more importantly, the five-foot pole that was its handle.

The little light he was getting filtered down from far above him - perhaps twice his height up, or even a bit more. The silhouette of a cluster of ferns shaded the crack in the ground he'd fallen through. He was vaguely surprised that his passage had left them intact. The walls of his prison were earth, mostly sandy soil mixed with clay, with some gravel thrown in. On the one hand, that might mean he could get enough of a hand- and foot-hold to climb out, if he could free himself. On the other hand, it also might mean he could bring the walls down on himself if he wasn't careful. The thought of being buried alive made him shudder, and then the tremors wouldn't stop; they wrung him out like a rag, and he clutched at the soil beneath him to make the trembling cease. He almost blacked out again before he finally managed to calm his breathing.

He remembered the bottle of water he hadn't drunk last night. Some fumbling with his free hand located it in his left vest pocket; miraculously, the fall hadn't broken the fragile plastic. He wedged it into the crook of his neck and held it in place with the side of his head as he unscrewed the cap. Then he carefully turned his head to the side, fighting back dizziness, and tilted it up just enough that he could press the bottle to his lips. His impulse was to chug the whole thing, but he restricted himself to half the bottle - he might be here for a while.

A trickle of dampness drifted down from somewhere above him. Was it raining? The thought of drowning in this hole as it filled up with rainwater sent his nerves into another panic attack, and he couldn't stop the scream from bubbling up through his throat.

It came out sounding like a squeaking door hinge. He curled his arm around his head and hyperventilated, shivering uncontrollably.

\---

Sheriff Carter pulled the Jeep up next to Taggart's armored vehicle. Jo's car was already here. He slid off the seat and headed up the slight embankment to where his deputy was waiting for him. "Any news yet?"

"Nothing so far." Jo's scowl had a pinch of worry to it. Jack wondered if that was for Taggart or for Fargo, but he knew better than to ask. She continued, "Taggart's going back and forth between insisting that we get everyone in town to sweep the woods for him and insisting that no one come out here and mess up any possible tracks Fargo may have left. What's your take?"

Jack absently rubbed the back of his head. "Stark's sending some of the GD security people here to help look. When they get here, I don't think we're going to be able to stop them from searching. Until they get there, if Taggart doesn't want us out there, maybe we can go over the territory he's already covered?"

Jo shrugged. "He's already been all over this whole strip near the road, but he says they'd been off the road for several hours when it happened."

"Okay, but if Fargo cut and ran . . . "

"Sure." Jo checked her sidearm and headed eastward; Jack made sure he had a flashlight and headed west. There were disturbances all through the layer of decaying leaves and dead ferns that carpeted the ground, but none of them looked like Fargo's boots. Or Taggart's, for that matter. The drifting mist wasn't helping much, either; everything was dark and smelled like fungus.

The woods were awfully quiet. Normally, Jack would have expected to hear birdsong and squirrel chatter, at the very least. There was a dog barking somewhere off in the distance, and a few insect noises in the leaves, but other than that, silence.

Hadn't Jo mentioned Taggart saw Lojack out here when he first saw his fireflies? Jack turned in the direction of the noise.

As he headed away from the road, he saw the black van with the Global Dynamics logo pass by. It didn't really matter if he messed up Taggart's tracks now; Stark's security boys would be doing much worse in a few minutes.

\---

Somewhere off in the distance, a dog was barking. Taggart listened, but he couldn't tell if it was his nemesis or some other canine interloper.

He sank down onto a stump and wiped the sweat from his eyes. He was confused - was this where he'd lost Fargo, or was this just a spot with a similar thicket? Everything looked different in the daylight. Worse, everything felt different, even smelled different. He'd been full of adrenaline and hope the previous night, then angry at Fargo for falling behind, then afraid he'd lost the little sport. Now, he was fatigued - not beyond his endurance; he'd been far more sleep-deprived under much more strenuous circumstances - but enough that he found it difficult to summon much in the way of emotional energy.

"Now, then," he muttered to himself, "nothing risked, nothing gained. He knew the dangers going out." It wasn't helping; he'd bullied Fargo into coming along, and he knew it, even if part of him believed that Fargo liked being jolted out of his usual routine once in a while.

Why was it so hard for him to figure out where he was? He knew these woods like the back of his hand. It shouldn't be possible for him to get lost. Even exhausted - much more exhausted and dehydrated than he was now - he should have an unerring sense of location in territory this familiar. Why did everything feel so strange?

The hair on the back of his arms was standing up. A warm breeze, the first stirring of the air since the mist had started, whispered across the back of his neck.

Taggart whirled around. A dozen lights, ovoid balls of yellow fire the size of his thumbs, trailed lazily across the edge of the clearing. The air was tangy with steam and something else, and a faint hissing rang out over the unnatural silence.

He started towards them. They drifted back, as if his approach pushed them away, then fluttered and winked out. Slowly, his skin settled back out of its goosebumps.

For a long moment, he stood silent, unmoving, waiting for them to return. In the distance, the dog barked again, and something like a car door slammed. Then, like someone had touched a hot wire to him, he bolted, running full out in the direction they had started to go.

\---

A dog was barking. It sounded very far away, but Fargo suspected that if it were anywhere other than right above him, it would be muffled.

Right in front of him was a single flicker of white, as if a mote of moonlight had gotten lost and was hiding from the sun here. He felt cold. He was damp from the trickle above him; the ferns lost droplets just irregularly enough that he couldn't predict them and thus brace for them. Still, though, he shouldn't be this cold. He couldn't stop shivering.

_Shock,_ he thought. _And this is a hallucination._ But it didn't look like one. Surely his fevered subconscious could come up with better than this?

"You lured me here, didn't you?" His tongue was so swollen from the poison ivy he could barely speak around it, and his voice was a raspy whisper. The ghostly flame bobbed, and drifted closer to him. The cold intensified, and Fargo felt himself drifting. It would be so easy to close his eyes and sleep . . . .

_You'd never wake up._ Fargo forced his eyes open. His right cheek was starting to swell and blister from the poison ivy, too. The wisp of white light was barely inches from his face. Somewhere in the center of his head, voiceless words assembled themselves from the ragged edges of his thoughts.

_Give up. Sleep._

"No." Fargo glared at the flickering thing. Hallucination or real, he might be terrified out of his wits, but damned if he was going to go quietly. He snatched at it with his free hand.

It drifted backwards, away from him. He flailed at it again, too hard - his chest twinged. It drifted back again, guttered, and went out.

The temperature went up ten degrees. Suddenly, the sleepiness vanished, replaced by stark horror. He was stuck at the bottom of a hole, he couldn't call for help, and there was something in here that was messing with his head, draining his energy like some sort of insubstantial vampire . . . .

And wow, was it messing with his head, because this state of babbling terror felt a _lot_ more natural than that bleak despondence had. Fargo curled his arm around his head again and whimpered some more; that felt more like himself.

Then he uncurled it. There had to be something he could do. _Think, Douglas. Is there anything you have down here that you could use to signal with?_

The only things he still had were the half-bottle of water, the broken flashlight, his wallet and keys, and the binoculars - his phone was back in Taggart's truck. He cursed himself for letting Taggart bully him into not bringing it with him. Levering himself up as gently as he could, and swallowing against the swimming in his head, he worked the binoculars out from under him with his good hand. He slowly twisted around trying to work his right arm free, fighting the vertigo and the pain in his chest. Definitely a broken rib, maybe two. He wrenched his right arm clear of the side of the fissure, and was rewarded by a fresh shower of dirt and gravel; both arms grabbed at his head to protect it as a chunk of the crevice slid down and buried him up to the waist.

Calming himself from _that_ panic took a good twenty minutes. As he forced air back into his lungs, he tried to focus on the assets he did have. What could he do with the binoculars that would serve as a signal? But his mind crawled back to the flickering white light. He'd seen it last night; if he hadn't turned in its direction, hadn't followed it without thinking for a second, he wouldn't have fallen down here. Had it done the same to Taggart? He'd gone for the other ones, the ones that _did_ show up on the binoculars.

Something was familiar about the infrared signature of the other ghost lights (_oh, don't say ghost, Douglas_). Where had he seen that before? Something about plasma harmonics . . . wait, did that make any sense? Whether it did or not, it was at least something he could try. He just hoped that the power supply in the binoculars was strong enough to send a detectable signal. He worked his keys out of his vest pocket - thank Entropy they were in his vest pocket, not his pants, or he wouldn't be able to get at them at all - and flipped open the power cell panel.

There was that barking again. _There's a dog loose in the woods._ That was from some old animated film, wasn't it? Fargo smirked a bit at the memory and kept working.

\---

"Carter, I think you need to see this." Jo's voice crackled from the radio. Jack raised it to his jaw. "I'll be right there. What's your location?"

"Follow the GPS locator on the comm." He glanced at the screen on the phone-like device. Jo was the blinking green light, he guessed, and he was the blinking white one. That ought to mean she was about a quarter-mile northeast of him. He turned that way and started jogging. The white light moved a pixel closer to the green one. Good, that probably meant he was going the right way.

He made it over the next ridge and lost any doubt. It looked like there was a very long, skinny campfire in that direction. He picked up the pace a bit.

By the time Carter made it to the hollow, Jo, Taggart, and two of the security guards were already in the clearing. A string of what looked like two-inch bubbles of yellow flame rose directly into the air, the lowest of them hovering about a yard over a clump of ferns. They were spaced about a foot apart, and there were twelve of them all together; as Carter finished his approach, he could see that they were linked by what looked like a tiny piece of Christmas tinsel, but much thinner and less shiny.

"What's that?" Someone had to ask. It might as well be him.

"No clue," shrugged Jo. "Those look a little like plasma projectiles, but they're a lot smaller, and if they are plasma projectiles they ought to be setting things on fire."

"They're my bioluminescent organisms," explained Taggart. Then he frowned. "Except that now that I can see them close up, I'm not sure they're biological at all."

"But why are they _here_?" asked Carter. Without waiting for an explanation, he snapped open his phone and pressed Allison's number.

"Blake here," her voice stated.

"Hey, Doctor Blake, we kind of have a situation here," Jack explained. "Do you know anything about twelve little yellow things that Jo says look like plasma projectiles connected by near-invisible strands of what might be mylar?"

There was a long pause. "No. Should I?"

"Well, they're here in the woods north of Catterby's farm, in a vertical sort of flock formation, although Taggart says he saw them drifting around all over the place yesterday and the day before, and Fargo's gone missing."

Another pause. "Let me call Nathan and get back to you."

"Sure thing. Let me know when you find out." She disconnected, and Jack tucked the phone back into his pocket. By this point there were half a dozen GD security goons standing around. "This look familiar to any of you guys?" They all shook their heads.

For a moment, everyone just watched the globes. They made a very faint hissing sound, and made Carter feel very nervous. Jo brushed at her uniform sleeves. "They're charging the air, just like a plasma globe would. We're lucky it's almost raining; if the air were dry, we'd be getting sparks and arcing."

"Is that why it's so quiet?" Jack asked. Taggart started. "You noticed that, too?" Jack and Jo both nodded. Taggart's eyebrows knotted in thought. "Perhaps. It would feel to any furred or feathered creature in the vicinity like a lighting storm was about to start, so they might well take shelter."

A muffled cracking noise came from somewhere. The security guards all went for their weapons, as did Jo and Taggart; Jack held up a hand. "Was that, um, the arcing you were talking about, Jo?"

She shook her head. "No, we'd see that. It didn't sound like sparks; it sounded like someone trying to sneak up behind us and stepping on a stick." She scanned the woods around them, firearm steady in her hand.

Jack took a couple of steps towards the plasma globes. Another crack, then another. "Or maybe breaking up sticks for firewood." He edged forward very carefully; the hairs on his arms were standing on end and his scalp was prickling. He cupped one hand around his mouth. "Anyone there?"

The voice that came back was so faint he could barely hear it. "Down here, Sheriff!"

Jack edged as close as he dared to the plasma globes and looked down, as requested. A narrow cleft in the ground was just barely visible under the ferns; he was practically on top of it. Someone his size, or Taggart's, would have gotten stuck in the hole if they fell into it, but it was just barely large enough to swallow someone Jo's size.

Or Fargo's.

"Fargo, is that you?" Jack unclipped his flashlight and tried to shine it down the hole.

"Of course it's me." The voice was unrecognizable, and difficult to make out, but the irritated tone certainly sounded like Fargo. "Could you please hurry up and get me out of here? I think my ankle is broken and I really have to pee."

"Well, there are these plasma thingys in the way," Jack started, but there was a click and a pop from somewhere below him, and the strand drifted up and westward. Jack decided to ask for an explanation after he got Fargo out of the hole, and gestured one of the GD guards over. "Does anyone have any rope?"

Taggart flipped the top of his backpack open, rummaged for a moment, and hauled out a coil. Jack reached out for it, but Taggart began uncurling it and called out "Heads up, Fargo, we're gonna throw you a line."

"You'll have to tie a loop in it," came the raspy stage whisper from the crack. "I don't have enough room to tie it around myself." Taggart grimaced, then expertly knotted a loop that managed not to look like a noose and began lowering it. He played out around four or five yards before Fargo tugged on it and called back "Okay, I think I got it around me."

Jack, Taggart, and two of the guards took positions along the rope and were braced to start hauling the rope back up when Carter's phone rang. He and Jo switched places, and he glanced at the device. Stark. He flipped it open. "Jack Carter here."

"Carter. Allie said you found our roving plasma balloon array."

"Wow, you actually named something in words I could understand. Thanks, Stark, that was nice of you for a change."

Jack was interrupted by a horrible muffled noise from the hole sending chills down his spine. He recognized it, although he wished he didn't; it was what it sounded like when a man who had already screamed his voice out started screaming again, or at least trying to. He winced. Nathan hadn't heard it. "Always a pleasure, Carter. Can you catch it and bring it back to Global? We've been looking for it for three days, ever since it broke its tether during testing."

"What's it for?" Jack was only half paying attention; Fargo was alternating between that awful gravelly half-sound, retching, and cursing in the stage whisper.

"It seeks out infrared sources and then arranges itself to serve as a beacon, so other forces can find and eliminate them." The casual tone with which Stark said 'eliminate' bugged Jack, but this wasn't the time to argue with him.

"Okay, so we need a _holy shit_, Nathan, I'll call you right back, okay?" Jack flipped the phone closed and ran to the edge of the crevice, where Taggart was lifting Fargo out by the arms. The little guy looked even smaller than normal, somehow, and he was covered in black mud. His entire right side was scraped up, his mouth was swollen almost shut, his right arm was pretty swollen too, and his right ankle was at a slightly odd ankle. He didn't appear to be able to stand on either leg.

"Fargo, what did you do to yourself?" Jo's voice was hard, but her eyes were more worried than angry.

"I was followin' Taggart's plasma balls when a real will-o-the-wisp showed up," Fargo whispered, no longer trying to project his voice. He sounded as if he were trying to talk around a mouthful of marbles. "It led me into that hole and I got a mouthful of poison ivy on the way down. And maybe a concussion, I'm not sure. I think I broke my ankle, and I couldn't move my other leg or my arm. Then it tried to suck my soul out, but I chased it away."

Jo, Taggart, and Jack exchanged a look. Jack reached out and felt Fargo's head; there was a lump the size of an egg just above his right ear. "Yeah, you probably have a concussion, all right," Jack said, as gently as he could. "Let's get you to the infirmary."

"Can someone help me behind a tree first?" Fargo blushed, the redness visible even behind the mud and poison-ivy rash, and his eyes flicked away from Jo. "I really, really have to go."

Two of the GD guards supported Fargo between them as he hopped awkwardly on his left leg behind a fairly large oak. Jack flipped the phone back open and called Stark back. "Look, Stark, can the plasma thingy wait? Fargo's got a head injury, maybe a concussion, and an ankle that's at least severely twisted."

"Fargo hurt himself that badly?" Stark sounded surprised. "Go ahead and bring him in, but there's a non-trivial risk of fire for every minute the plasma balloon array is out there."

"How do we bring it in? Wait a minute." Jack turned away from the phone as Fargo half-hopped back into view. "Fargo, how did you get the plasma balloons to focus on you?"

Fargo tapped the pair of binoculars he was wearing around his neck. "These have both passive and active night vision modes. The passive just receives infrared signal and boosts the visible light signal, but the active mode is actually a mini-LIDAR system, using a weak infrared laser. Most of the current Global Dynamics plasma projects use infrared signals as markers or directional signals, so I boosted the power on the active mode and jammed the laser so it wouldn't track. It was acting last night like it was reacting to the heat Taggart and I were giving off, so I was guessing it would have an even stronger reaction to an actual directed infrared source." He gestured. "Now that I can actually see it, I'm guessing that's the roving plasma balloon array? It's supposed to find infrared sources, but stay far enough away to avoid capture, and shutter the plasma effect if it encounters too strong an artificial light source." His voice creaked and gave out.

"Yup. Successful test." Jack looked at the binoculars. "Will it come back if you switch those back on?"

The smaller man swallowed and tried to continue. "Uh, probably. I don't know how long the power cell will hold out for; I was worried it would cut out before you guys got close enough to hear me." A reflection of remembered fear flickered across Fargo's face, and Jack realized that he'd heard their conversation long before they'd heard him.

He turned back to the phone. "Okay, Stark, I don't know how much of that you heard, but Fargo has a jury-rigged pair of binoculars that might attract the plasma balloons. We're going to try it, but if it runs out of juice, you'll have to send someone else out to catch them, because we've got to get Fargo out of here."

"Got it. Let me know if it works when you get here." Stark broke off the connection abruptly.

As Jack turned back around, Taggart and two of the security guards were arranging Taggart's capture net into a makeshift hammock. Fargo sat in the middle of it, with a guard holding each end, and held the binoculars out to one side. Jack nodded. "Let's go, guys."

"Aren't we going to wait for the plasma experiment?" asked one of the guards.

"No, if it's going to find us, it can find us closer to the road," replied Jack, setting off.

As it happened, the array must not have gone very far. By the time they arrived back at the vehicles, a dozen small globes of yellowish plasma were trailing after Fargo. With him half-wrapped in what looked like a safety net, there was a hint of the circus to the whole affair.

Taggart left first, followed by the GD van, still trailing the plasma balloons like their namesakes. As Jack and Jo were getting in their cars, Lojack came bounding up, panting and looking like he'd run across half the woods to get there. "Sorry, I don't think we need an animal act," Jack chuckled at the mutt. Lojack sniffed at him, then whined and waved a paw towards the woods, roughly in the direction from which they'd just come.

"It's okay, guy, we got him." The dog whined again. Jack reached down, scratched him behind the ears, and assured him, "And we'll fill in the hole so it doesn't happen again, is that what you want, fellah?" It must have been close enough; Lojack licked him and then scampered off again.

\---

The medical technicians had insisted on looking over Taggart, too, once they realized he'd had repeated exposure to the plasma globes. He'd protested, but honestly, he was too tired to object too much, and had in fact fallen asleep in the middle of a scan.

"I'd been so sure it was bioluminescence. The movement algorithm on those things is so lifelike." The zoologist was alternating between berating himself for mistaking a physics experiment for a biology one and blaming Stark for the whole thing.

"Act'ly, there isn't a movement alg'r'thm 'tall, 'cept t' move towards 'n infr'red source 'til y' get with'n fift'n feet, th'n maintain distance, " replied Fargo, who was not quite as badly off as he had at first appeared. His ankle, though it was both sprained and dislocated, wasn't broken, and while he was mildly concussed, he was recovering. At the moment, his two biggest problems were the broken rib and the poison ivy, and they'd loaded him up with antihistamines for the latter. Between the swollen tongue and the drowsiness from the antihistamines, he was almost unintelligible.

"Well, the important thing is that we have the plasma array back, and there's no permanent damage done." Stark's smile was a little too tight, and he seemed to be deliberately looking away from Fargo most of the time. Jack thought that was a little odd, but he was willing to hold his tongue.

Jo seemed less inclined to do so. "How did it get loose to begin with?"

Stark shook his head. "We're not sure. We were testing it in mid-afternoon, and we had two or three infrared-emitter targets we were expecting it to find, but it focused on one that wasn't on the testing grounds - we think it might have been someone's brush fire, but we don't have confirmation on that - and it hopped the fence. By the time we got it tracked down, it had moved on to some other infrared source, and then it just got lost, until Taggart started hunting it. Would have been nice if you'd mentioned it," he added, giving Taggart a look that was not a glare so much as an expression of active disappointment.

"I swear, it never occurred to me that it was a physics experiment, and I checked to see if it might possibly be an escaped GD bio specimen." Taggart was unusually defensive. Usually when Stark got snarky with him, he snarked right back, but he was acting oddly emotionally vulnerable, or at least volatile.

Dr. Blake interrupted. "Jim, I think we probably ought to send you home. You're still showing unusually high levels of fatigue, and you're dehydrated, so I'm going to have one of the GD drivers take you and your truck back home." Taggart looked up to protest that he was fine, and then looked at his hands, shook his head, and sighed. "I supposed I should accept small favors."

Jo raised her hand. "If you'd like, I can follow them home to make sure they arrive safely, and then bring the driver back here."

"Thank you, Deputy Lupo, I think that's an excellent idea." Allison smiled, and Taggart did, too, if more faintly.

"What 'bout th' will-th'-wisp down in th' hole?" mumbled Fargo. The others all exchanged a look. Allison took a step towards him and said, in the same voice she might have used to soothe Kevin out of a nightmare, "There was no will-o-the-wisp, Fargo. Those aren't real. You were concussed, in pain, and having a bad allergic reaction. You were hallucinating."

"Was not." Fargo's eyes narrowed. They'd removed his glasses because of the way his face was swelling, so he couldn't see without squinting.

"I'm sure it looked very real at the time, Fargo, but there's no such thing as ghosts. You're a scientist; you know that." Allison sounded very patient, and she seemed genuinely worried; she gently brushed Fargo's forehead to feel for fever. Stark just rolled his eyes.

"At any rate, we're going to have the hole filled in so no one else can fall in, and check the surrounding area for similar hazards, so don't worry about someone else being lured in," added Jack. Stark continued the eyeroll. Allison just nodded.

"M'kay," answered Fargo, relaxing. His eyes fluttered closed, although whether he was asleep or just drowsy was hard to tell.

Deputy Lupo steered Taggart out of the infirmary. "Let's get you home."

Taggart looked thoughtful. "Maybe there is a new bioluminescent organism out there, and Fargo just mistook it for a will-o-the-wisp. I mean, I saw it too, when he first pointed it out, although once he pointed out it didn't show up on the scopes I assumed it was a reflection." He rubbed at his chin. "I should go check it out."

"You have plenty of time for that after you've gotten rested up, and we've gotten someone out there to fill in that hole." Jo's grip on his arm was steely, but warm.

"But if that hole is its lair, you might block it in." Taggart gestured in what he thought might be the correct general direction. The electromagnetic fields from the plasma balls had messed with his sense of direction, he was sure.

"Then you can worry about it later." Jo tugged him through the main entrance and towards the parking lot, where an intern in a GD uniform was standing by Taggart's car.

"Think we could stop by Cafe Diem for dinner on the way? I haven't eaten all day," wheedled Taggart.

Jo folded her arms. "Takeout only."

"Yes, ma'am." Taggart climbed into the passenger seat of his own vehicle and handed the keys to the intern. Still, as outcomes go, getting escorted home by the lovely Deputy Lupo wasn't half bad. He eased the seat back, and began thinking about what sort of biochemical reaction could result in that sort of ghostly white light, as the intern coaxed his truck out of the parking lot and down the main road into Eureka.


End file.
